New York Sen. Chuck Schumer is backing a bill to help with the $1 trillion student-loan debt crisis.

In New York state alone, college graduates’ average debt load jumped 35 percent, to nearly $26,000, last year, from $19,016 eight years earlier, according to College Insight.

“Private student loans should once again be dischargeable in bankruptcy, and that’s why I am co-sponsoring the Fairness for Struggling Students Act. However, the core of the problem is the rising cost of a college education. Congress should also consider ways to make college more affordable so that these students are not left with crushing debt,” said Schumer.

The rise reflects skyrocketing costs of higher education and increasing use of debt to cover the tab. Once graduates enter the tough job market, however, many find they can’t earn enough to meet the minimum monthly payments on their loans. Some desperate young people are landing in bankruptcy court.

Student-loan debt has outpaced credit-card and car-loan balances to become the second-largest form of consumer debt, behind mortgages, according to a new report from the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Of 11 states included in the report, New York has the highest composition of student-loan debt balance per capita.

In addition to Schumer, New York’s Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is also considering the Fairness for Struggling Students Act, primarily sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). The legislation calls for amending a 2005 provision that made it almost impossible to discharge private student-loan debt — about $150 billion of the current US total — in bankruptcy.

Gillibrand “is deeply concerned about the burden of student loans on young New Yorkers and is looking at ways to address this issue,” a spokesperson told The Post. “We are closely examining this legislation.”

The bill marks Durbin’s second run at this legislation and has already attracted seven Democratic co-sponsors. A similar bill in the House of Representatives is co-sponsored by 17 Democrats, including New York’s Charles Rangel.

Manhattan attorney David Shaev, who has been practicing consumer-bankruptcy law for three decades, says he’s seeing an unprecedented influx of young grads undone by unsustainable student debt.

One 23-year-old is filing for bankruptcy protection because he earns just $2,000 a month from two part-time jobs, pays $750 in rent and owes roughly $900 a month in private student-loan debt.

“Ten years ago, one of the main reasons to go into bankruptcy was a lack of health insurance,” said Shaev. “But student loans are taking over — it’s the real monster in the room now.”

Massive student-loan debt hamstrings graduates, limiting their access to other types of credit, including mortgages.

“It has a chill on the economy,” said Chris Lindstrom of US Public Interest Research Group. “And private student-loan debt ensnares the individual borrower, who cannot get out from under it if he’s in financial distress.”